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This website covers knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints, amongst other topics. Opinions expressed here are strictly those of the owner, Jack Vinson, and those of the commenters.

HBR this month has a great article on Too Many Projects by Rose Hollister and Michael D. Watkins. The essence of the article is that organizations have far too many projects, initiatives, efforts underway. And that they struggle to STOP that work - or not start it to begin with.

The latest DevOps Enterprise Summit (DOES) wrapped up last week in Las Vegas. Amongst the videos and tweets and blog posts that have come out of the event was a quick interview with Gene Kim on the Agile Amped podcast with Greg Bledsoe of SolutionsIQ.

This is a great list of the Internet-era ways of working from Tom Loosemore and public digital on what they mean by work in the era of the internet. I love coda to this list - “break any of these rules sooner than do anything barbaric.” There are also a number of items in here that make me step back and pause to check about my own assumptions.

My review of Kevin Kohl’s Addicted to Hopium - Throughput: Using the DVA Business Process to Break the Guesswork Habit. The book is a fictionalization of the long history that Kohls has had in bringing Theory of Constraints and related approached to GM and other organizations. Kohls gives us the story of MegaCo and engineer Andrew Wright and their journey from barely being able to keep their heads above water to applying a strategic approach to improvement, thanks to the impetus of a guru in the form of a possible customer.

Another piece on dealing with collaborators and personal relationships from Adam Kahane in Strategy+Business, this time “There’s No Such Thing as Difficult People.” His suggestions revolve around the idea that whenever I am upset or angry or in a pique, it is me that is upset. What is it about me that is causing that scenario? How can I “wear the world as a loose garment?”

In essence, this book is about taking the Lean Startup concepts and applying them much more broadly - inside companies, non-profits, governments, and or even a lemonade stand. Most of the ideas and proposals in the book make a lot of sense, and it is useful for me to have them collected in this fashion.

Soon: An Overdue History of Procrastination isn't a book about how to "fix" procrastination. Rather it is a review of the different ways people have thought about it over time, as well as Santella’s own challenges with procrastination. There are many takes on the topic that made for a good, fairly quick read.

Beyond the Goal is a great encapsulation of the TOC ideas and concepts. Eli Goldratt summarizes the previous 20 years (and more) of thinking and many of the topics in this audio book continued to be developed beyond this publication.

“When Your Team’s Path Forward Isn’t Clear, Carve It” by Adam Kahane takes the idea of “carving” a solution through its paces. I like this way of framing the approach, even if the blog post doesn’t provide specifics (leave that for his book).

Gene Kim and John Willis recorded a set of conversations called Beyond the Phoenix Project to talk about the DevOps movement since the publication of The Phoenix Project. (It’s available as an audio and a transcription.) I very much appreciate that the thinking behind DevOps has been geared around learning and applying concepts and ideas from all of these areas. I'm sure there are cargo-cultists who simply try to mimic what they see other people doing, but the people who are developing and growing in DevOps are clearly those who are looking at the giants that have come before them, climbing up on their shoulders, doing something new that is relevant to their current view of the world, and then sharing that back with the community to test and refine and develop further. I got a strong sense of excitement and desire to learn from this.

Clarke Ching has created a new book to try to help people understand what is blocking their work (or life?). The Bottleneck Rules: How to Get More Done (When Working Harder isn't Working) is a quick read and got me thinking more about how I talk about this topic with people.

My long-time blogging friend, Jim McGee, will be teaching a course on project management and has some thoughts on how to enhance the course this time around. His main question in Design projects before worrying about managing them is "We would do a better job at managing projects if we spent more time designing them first"?

The Theory of Constraints community has a number of useful tools to help people think through change: the Layers of Resistance and the Change Matrix. Lars Axelsen posted a nice article combining these two ways of thinking, Change must address reservations!

Henry Camp gave another interesting talk on "Gaining a Competitive Edge through Sufficiency - 10 Steps to Breakthrough Results". His focus this time was on the concepts from The Choice, which describes the necessary conditions for a successful life: Lots of chances, Toughness/willingness to recover from mistakes, and the Ability to collaborate with others.

Humberto Baptista led a thoughtful discussion on "The Elusive Nature of POOGI" (process of ongoing improvement). He had a lot of fun with the language and suggesting Eli Goldratt left more meaning between the lines.

This blog is about knowledge management, personal effectiveness, theory of constraints and other topics. Opinions expressed here are strictly those of the owner, Jack Vinson, and those of the commenters.